Jonathan Rauch began the discussion, presenting his view that gay marriage is and will be a good thing and should be approved. He cited most of his material from his 2004 book. He agreed that marriage was associated with less poverty and crime, and with more stability. To which Beau wrote, “I wasn’t sure that [he was saying that] marriage was good for itself or what exactly what the problem with marriage is.  It sound[s] like the problem was poverty and crime.

He spoke of people as straight and gay instead of male and female.” I noted that distinction as well. It was curious to me - that my femaleness was reduced to my heterosexuality. We weren’t created hetero and homo - we were created male and female. But this gets to a point that I’ll bring up later.

Rauch criticized the view that marriage is merely an agreement between two people to “be there.”  His goal was to strengthen the “pair bond.” To which Beau wrote, “Indeed, marriage involves more than two people agreeing.  He didn’t say what constitutes a “pair” beyond two people.” There’s more to Beau’s comment, but it relates more to what David Blankenhorn said later.

What I noted (and Charmaine did as well) was that Rauch’s argument about the two people “being there” was more that he was saying it was “being there for me.” It’s a selfish motivation for marriage - I noted to Charmaine in our conversation after the panel that when you look at the marriage vows that a couple recite to one another that it’s not about what the other person will do for “me” but rather what I will do for the other person. When Beau and I stand before God and family and friends on New Year’s Eve we will not say to one another what we expect to get but what we expect to give. Marriage is not about selfishness - it’s about sacrifice.

Rauch then said that marriage was about sending a “social signal.”  He challenged us to try answering the question, “How’s your wife?” with, “I have no idea.” Society is involved in marriage. He suggested that going state by state would allow us the opportunity to gather the necessary information about the benefits of changing the law. To which Beau wrote, “as Charmaine later brought out, he avoids the question of what really benefits human beings and suggests that we can judge better later.  The basic arguments about statistics of marriage and poverty, e.g., suggest that marriage is good for rich [homosexuals] because they’re rich. So all that would be judged later, really, is whether wealth is good.  But does changing marriage law help us answer whether wealth is good?”

The rebuttal came from David Blankenhorn, whose premise was that the proponents of same sex marriage are all about deinstitutionalizing marriage. He reviewed various descriptions of marriage as commitment, expression of love, social institution etc. He pointed out that the recent definitions given by proponents of same sex “marriage,” and recent court opinions in favor of it, say marriage is private, and not about sex nor children, and is undefinable. To which Beau wrote, “Undefinable because the facts of nature, male and female bonding result in children, are being denied.  Definitions not grounded in “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” are merely desires.”

He spoke for securing the basic rights of children and said that these conflicted with the rights of adults. He aimed to secure the tie between the parents and the child.  He aimed to secure the rights of the child to know his natural parents.

He understood Rauch to say that marriage was good no matter how it was defined.

He avoided questions about the human good and spoke only about wealth, crime etc. because marriage is a human institution. To which Beau wrote, “It’s unncessary to avoid ethics and arguments about what is good because marriage is a human institution.”

Beau’s final comment, “So, in the end, both Jonathan and David avoid talking about what is good in marriage itself by avoiding a discussion about what is a good man and what is a good society.  [David] follows history, tradition, and says past societies haven’t had marriage include various “legal parents.”  Both end up talking about what works for society without addressing whether it works to improve society.” That’s a great observation.

There followed some questions from the guests and no one mentioned what I considered to be the lone, huge elephant in the room - the spiritual or religious aspect of the marriage covenant. Charmaine asked David why he didn’t mention it. David said he came at the issue from a strictly anthropological point of view. He deliberately chose to set aside the spiritual, the religious.

To me the spiritual is at the heart of the discussion because it’s not really a marriage issue at all. The overall issue that has led to the debate about same sex marriage and marriage in general is the sin issue. Homosexuals and many heterosexuals don’t want to admit that they’re acting in direct contradiction to God’s sexual order. It is sin that it the root of the problem, imho. So while it was an interesting discussion, for me it missed the mark because it ignored the central cause of the destruction of marriage as an institution.